


The Long Con

by Louffox



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Bard School, Child Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, It's a little sad, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Games, Minor Character Death, Mother Issues, Oscar Wilde Origins, Oscar Wilde is not really a jerk he's just a con artist, Parental Abuse, Wilde! Is! Fine!, bad homelife, but maybe could use a hug, con artist, marks and cons, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-01-16 14:17:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: Bard, illusionist, divinationist, meritocratic agent, handler, investigator, flirt, charmer-But before he was all thathe was a grifter.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I usually don't like posting anything until it's complete, because I've left so many things hanging undone, but I've got a lot written out for this and with the hiatus, I wanted to get this ball rolling, and also maybe hold myself responsible for not forgetting about this and getting distracted by other projects.
> 
> Warning: I know next to nothing about Pathfinder, IRL Oscar Wilde, European History, or really anything that would be helpful and relevant to this. 
> 
> Sorry I double space at the end of every paragraph (old habit) and I did write a ma-HOO-sive amount of this on my phone with the dumb swype keyboard, so apologies for any typos.

Oscar Wilde was unwanted from the moment he was born.

 

Everything was just a continuation of the same theme, after that.

 

Infancy and early toddler life wasn't in his memory, but he'd cobbled together some third person memories from peers and assumptions and his mother's own words. He had spent his first- well, even before that, actually…. his negative three months of life, before even being born, ruining his mother's figure. And when he was finally born he continued ruining her life. Colicky and fussy, needing to be fed and changed and rocked all the time, crying for no apparent reason, keeping her up at odd hours, vomiting, soiling himself. All the things babies tended to do. His toddler years weren't much better, only then he could do all that and do it on the move, as he learned to walk, and use garbled English and Gaelic.

 

His first memory that was his own was pulling a con. He didn't quite recall what exactly the con was, he just remembered his mother planted him at the edge of a market stall and told him to pretend he was lost and scared. The footy, fatty scent of cheese was heavy in the air as he worked with all his might to imagine he was alone and scared. People came over and asked him questions and tried to comfort him, but he didn't know what to tell them, so he just wailed and rubbed his face. When his mother finally came and collected him, apologizing to the strangers and thanking them with an odd clipped accent to her english, she looked like she was heavily pregnant again. Later, she revealed the trick. The fake pregnant belly was a bag, and it was full of cheese and bread and wine, plucked carefully from the stalls as the shopkeepers tended to the poor lost baby.

 

“Free babysitting  _ and _ a meal,” she laughed, back in their comfortable gaelic tongue. She had left the rest who spoke their language behind, after one too many bungled jobs had started encouraging the hateful irish stereotypes. They weren’t banished from their peers as much as stongly encouraged to leave. That was fine with Jane Wilde. She always felt being stuck in the dusty Irish section of town was just holding her back anyways. The men she brought home went from dark grease-stained hands and thick beards and heavy boots left at the door, to more loafers and business suits. When they did have a home, at least. They were moving south, but skirting around London, staying around university areas where there was always a crowd to work, a mark to snatch. Jane Wilde had a youthful constitution, long, dark, curling hair, and bright big eyes that made her appear even more girlish and ever interested in whatever her marks prattled on about. The instances where Jane introduced toddling little Oscar, people always remarked at how he was her spitting image.

 

They traveled. More cons. Distractions, often. Occasional manipulation. Trickery, lies, smooth quick hands and carefully fabricated facial expressions, secret pockets and subtle fencing. He took to her trade like a fish to water. He was addicted to two things- the power, and her attention. He never stood a chance, with her. Not only was she so practiced at making herself desirable, excellent at both demanding and doleing out attention, but she was his mother, and the only constant in his life. He never questioned their lifestyle, not even when she was using him to squeeze in tiny window gaps to steal things, distract people so she could steal things, drawing attention or diverting it as was necessary to get what they wanted. Food, clothes, jewels, lodging. The methods were all just part of the game.

 

First, he was most often  used deployed like that first time, as a distraction. It was easy. He had a high clear voice, fat baby cheeks, and the same innocent blue eyes as his mum, and people took to him immediately. Eventually, as he got old enough to gain a bit more dexterity, they would trade places. She would provide a distraction while he slipped through tiny windows or under counters to get what they wanted. 

 

Occasionally they would do a more elaborate con, making up stories about themselves and playacting as someone else. She might pretend to be a young mother on the road, walking a bit behind the carriage her husband drove because the motion of the cart was making her wet-eyed child nauseous, and folks would share stories or food with them, or offer them a ride in their own methods of transportation. They talked themselves into the company of a camp of traveling salesman and spent a while eating richly, then stole as many goods as they could carry and left in the night. Once they bluffed their way into a bank, pretending Jane was a young nanny of one of the higher ups in the bank, bringing their toddler to have lunch with his dad. They didn’t dare try for the vaults, but did manage to fill their pockets with miscellaneous valuables.

 

He got older. He went from a plush-cheeked toddler to a lanky child, with long fingers and curls hanging past his ears. They settled into Chelmsford for a while, as she taught him his numbers and letters, how to read books and people. She taught him how to play jaunty dancing music on a lyre.

 

They worked together some nights. They would go to bars and he would play music, and she would either dance solo to isolate a single mark, or whip the crowd into a energized mob, depending on what their goals were that particular night.

 

They were homeless, technically, but he never felt like he was. They didn’t live like beggars or thieves. They lived like proper con artists, emphasis on  _ artist. _ He never felt like a scammer. This was simply their craft.

 

Oscar practiced hard at his music. She loved to run a crowd- he did as well, delighting in the heady rush of power, controlling a room or individual with ease- but she also loved his music. When he practiced and played, she either helped him improve, or let herself be the one carried by the music. It was the only time she turned all of her attention to him. Playing became his favorite pastime, not because he loved the music, but because she so clearly did and he loved seeing her happy.

 

He was just a child. A boy who wanted his mother to love him.

 

He wasn't stupid, he knew she wasn't  _ actually _ glad to have him. Just glad to have his talent, glad to use him, glad for what he could provide. He never quite lost awareness that he was unwanted, but he liked to bask in the attention and pretend it was for him, not for the musical talent he had, or whatever shiny bauble he’d swiped. She didn’t hate him, exactly, but her love went other places- men, music, money, dancing, drinks, finery, pleasure, herself. Not to him.

 

He tried to force himself to seek something other than love. He recognized a lost battle before his age was more than all his fingers. Reading a room, a face, a person, she’d made sure he was good at it, and so he could see every irritated micro expression, every flash of annoyance, the fatigue, the exasperation from the young mother who never really wanted to be one in the first place.

 

If he couldn’t have love, he’d find something else to have.

 

One of his best memories of misdirection was when he played a jaunty tune that encouraged several people to get up on the bar and dance, and the room was clapping and all pointed that way, and such was the delight in the dancing that he was able to take an earring from the very ear of a woman near the front, plucking his lyre one handed, slipping the hook from her flesh decisively and without her noticing. The earring was lighter than expected, made of several strings of diamonds that rippled like water and caught the light in movement and fluidity.

 

His mother beat him for being too ambitious. He wanted to tell her he got away with it, so what did it matter, but her face was furious and he didn't dare.

 

However, he did twist one of the threads of gems from the earring before turning it over to her, and fenced it himself. He hid the gold in his boot for months before deciding what to do with it.

 

Now he was eleven, and they were going to travel by boat. They would do a manipulation rather than a misdirection. The dock guards were on high alert, from some local gang events that had been going on, and there would be no sneaking past them onto the boat. This was fine. They had done this before. His mother went one way into the crowd on the dock, and he went the other. The crowd were all angry travelers trying to get onto the boat, but it was being checked for smuggled material first, so everyone was disgruntled and impatient.

 

He heard a clear voice jeering from the other side of the mass of people. A few others joined it. He did as well, shouting abuse at the guards, moving a bit away, shouting more, moving. They slowly worked the crowd into something far more useful and exciting. A mob. He stepped just to the edge of it, once it had built up a nice fury, and watched it surge forward to wash past the guards. It was easy and predictable. He was tall for his age and positively reedy, all elbows and knees, keeping his hair long to hide the ears he'd not grown into yet. His smile was practiced and warm, his whole face able to smile on command. This was his life. He seized the crowd, unified it’s attention, whipped it into anger, and threw it at the docks.

 

This power wasn’t the warmth of a mother’s love, but it was a different kind of fire. He watched a fist fly at the face of a guard-

 

A pure sound carried out over the crowd.

 

The mob continued to writhe, just on the brink of bursting past the guards, and the sound started back up for another moment.

 

It was like a cold morning on an open field. Sudden quiet, stillness. Peace. He smelled fresh grass. Oscar felt his entire body relax.

 

And immediately try to tense. This was undoubtedly unnatural. He was never fully relaxed, always ready, always aware, and even his relaxed state was usually just another practiced farce. Something was wrong.

 

He scanned the crowd quickly and finally caught sight of what had soothed the crowd he and his mother had worked so hard to whip up.

 

A woman stood on the deck of the ship, on the highest deck she could get to without climbing. She was poised, holding her back straight and head high as she looked over the crowd, no longer a mob, no longer under the power of the Wilde's, and nodded. She let the violin drop from her clavicle and lowered it and the bow to her sides.

 

While he and his mother waited for the next day to try again and board a ship, he snuck out and bought a violin and a book, with the gold left over from the earring.

 

His mother thought the book wasn't a terrible idea, but thought the violin was stupid as anything.

 

“You need two hands to fiddle. How to you propose to lift valuables when you're sawing away at that? You should stick to the lyre,” she told him. He told her that he would just use magic to steal their valuables, and she had a good long laugh at that.

 

“Magic is for rich French school boys, and paladin healers,” she said. “I'm not sending you to school.”

 

But she did enjoy the violin, he could see it in her eyes. He saw it in everyone's eyes. A sense of something else. Wonder, hunger, longing. He spent all his free time working to master it, so one day he could be a bard.

 

And maybe so his mother would always look at him like that, eyes soft and warm and unguarded.

 

He read the book and bought more. Stole more. Found other bards and spied on them, drinking it all in. Conning could make people do what you wanted, but here was real power. He learned to shoot sparks from his fingers, summon four tiny lights he could control, use prestidigitation to add a sparkle to his eye and a bit more whiteness to his teeth. He was able to create darkness in a room, and occasionally make people think they heard old friends calling to them from around a corner. If he held perfectly still, he could make himself invisible.

 

Jane started getting ill in early spring. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post more simply because I am impatient to get to my own story, apparently that is a thing.
> 
> WARNINGS: this chapter contains  
> -character death  
> -child abuse (physical, emotional, and of neglect)  
> -manipulation
> 
> I am not a grifter myself, I only know bits and pieces from logic puzzles, reading other books about con artists, and research. (Recommended grifter reading: Curse Workers series by Holly Black, American Gods by Neil Gaiman)
> 
> I also know nothing about Europe, England, how the school system over there works, or how tech and identifying papers and etc work in this world. I'm playing fast and loose with it, and if anyone has any blatant corrections, don't hesitate to let me know down in the comments.

Jane started getting ill in early spring. 

 

She still was able to use it. They always were excellent at using whatever they had- a tear in her gown, the time Oscar was struck by a carriage while fleeing a crime, the rain ruining their makeup, the loss of her favorite gloves, they used these to add to cons. So as she became paler and more wan, she played more damsel in distress roles, choosing pity over seduction as her tool of choice. They moved in with a man, Paul Voisin, a sympathetic who’d gone to England from Paris as an automaton mechanic. He had big dreams and big emotions and big hands that left Oscar's ears ringing when he was drunk and sour with England's lack of job opportunities for someone with his skill set.

 

“Blasted backwards country with no sense and nothing good at all. No automated power here, just useless people like you. Good for nothing,” he would sometimes grumble, sometimes scream. He took good care of Jane, though. A lifetime spent reading people left him an open book to young Oscar, who could clearly see he enjoyed having a frail mostly helpless woman reliant on him. The only power Paul could glean was over the ailing and small. Oscar took note of this. Power over small people made you small as well.

 

On the roof of their apartment, he hid from wrathful Paul and his impatient mother, practicing his magic and song where he wouldn't be beaten for it. He kept Paul in the dark about his burgeoning talents as a bard. Best not let him know he had housed a pair of swindlers. Though Jane's con of being frail and needing care was becoming less of a farce each week. She had spoke in a whisper before as part of the act, to seem more pitiful and pathetic, but now she couldn't speak at more than that without going into fits of coughing that made her eyes run and shoulders quake.

 

He didn't realize how acclimated he had been to her backhanded compliments, subtle put-downs, cold orders, and dismissive-if-present-at-all attention, until it was gone. She seemed to vanish slowly, the preoccupied, prideful, crafty irish woman becoming a fragile bedridden lady who could barely spare any energy for talking, let alone her usual repertoire of taunts.

 

Oscar wasn't sure who he hated more: her, for making the gaslighting, manipulative, emotional abuse seem so normal, or himself, for missing it so much.

 

When he had sat at her bedside and prattled on about his day, he was used to her making curt, dismissive noises, often looking around distractedly, sometimes even turning away from him to stare out the window and sigh heavily. And he would try harder to think of what he could say to amuse her, impress her, to garner an ounce of respect or admiration or love from her. How could he earn her love? She never cut him off or openly told him that she was irritated and didn’t care, but her body language was loud as a scream, and eventually he would give up and go try to find something to do. Something to earn that eternally out of reach love.

 

No amount of shining baubles, gems, or gold could ever afford her love. He was reaching for something never attainable after all. After all his hard work, his devotion, his attention and affection, the risks he took and pain he amassed, and gold, and jewels, planning and plotting and pushing himself to be more, more clever, more mature, more confident, more  _ deserving _ -

 

But it was never about him deserving her love. It would never be clear to him whether she hadn’t had any love to give at all, or whether she simply hoarded it like the shiny possessions they spent their whole lives grasping for.

 

It didn’t matter. She died, and the chance for his mother’s love slipped away from his straining fingertips, and the opportunity was lost forever.

 

In the months before, when she didn't have the energy to convey her impatience with him, when she was a captive of her bed and he could talk as much as his heart desired, he still felt unsatisfied. He found himself wishing she would turn her face to the window and roll her eyes, or huff and study her fingernails, or stare up at the ceiling and be bored with him. He just wanted things to go back to the way they used to be. Even if that meant going back to the abuse, the dissatisfaction, the self loathing, the fear.

 

Because he was still dissatisfied and self loathing and fearful, but now he didn't understand why. 

 

Maybe it was never her. Maybe she hadn't been abusing him. Maybe she was a perfect mother and he was just too broken and stupid to get it, and all the bad feelings were his fault all along.

 

She had no loving last words when she died. He found her, the unmistakable stillness of an empty husk. It wasn't that she looked dead, it was that she was that she looked lifeless. When he lifted the mattress to retrieve the pouch of gold and gems, her weight barely contributed to the bed. Her empty, still body jostled a bit as he put the bed carefully back, and he fled before Paul could get home. He never knew if she was buried or cremated, or if Paul even held any ceremony for her. He took all the valuables he could find in the house and left.

 

His mother was his entire life, but when she died, his life went on.

 

He didn't think about it. He would not look at the tear in his world. He pressed forward. Mourning wasn't something he knew how to do, so he did what he knew, and planned.

 

Then began his first time conning wholly on his own. The first task he gave himself was a massive, complex plan, but it he'd anticipated this for a long time, and had been carefully considering each move.

 

He would send himself to a bard university.

 

No home, no parents. No formal education of any kind. No income. No identifying papers, and he wasn't even of proper university age, two years to go until he was 16. But he wasn't going to sit around and wait.

 

First thing he did was get a train ticket to Essex.

 

He counted the money on the train and did his calculations. During the trip, he managed to find a cart with a sleeping old man about his size, and simply took his small suitcase, barely more than a briefcase, after checking to make sure neither the case nor the man had magic. He didn't try and hide it, but simply marched down the corridor with the thing held casually at his side, nodding politely to folks he passed.

 

The moment the train arrived, he made his way off. He took a moment to orient himself in the new city before moving with the same casual confidence toward the university.

 

The University at Essex was a good one, for sure, but he figured if he was going to hack school, he may as well go for the best. This was just one of the careful steps he needed to take.

 

He found some nice, if old fashioned, clothes in the suitcase, a few meaningless business folders, and shoes that were far too big. He walked into a shop carefully with the too big shoes on and simply swapped them for some better fitting ones, walking out with them on his feet.

 

The university cafeteria was busy and comfortable. He first lifted a hat to pull low over his eyes and conceal his face for what he was about to do. From there, it was easy to knock a drink over on someone and to lift their student identification card while mopping their wet shirt front with napkins, apologizing in rapid Gaelic. The student seemed startled and mildly irritated, and shooed him away.

 

He ditched the hat on his way to the student records office, and prestidigitated his clothes to be perfectly unwrinkled. He snapped the identification card with a twist and began scratching at it with a copper, weathering it until the name was barely legible.

 

The trick would be to do this without magic. A school of magic expected students to try and cheat with magic. Thanks to his mundane mother, he didn't have to rely on magic. It was a handy tool, for sure, but not the only tool in his bag of tricks. And where magic left traces that could easily be detected, a mark would often help to hide the con out of shame. Nobody wanted to admit they were scammed. If this went right, Oscar wouldn't have to lift a finger to cover his tracks, it would be covered for him.

 

He chose the desk with the girl who had the most closed off body language, shoulders curled, legs tightly crossed, toes pointed downward under her chair, and approached, projecting his best alpha swagger. Surety was key here.

 

He flirted relentlessly with her as he showed her his broken card, watching the pores around her nose shine with stress sweat, leaning into her space, making sure she got a clear view of his face. He'd prestidigitated himself some strong cedar cologne as well, to really drive himself into her memory. She used the machine to stamp him out a new card, and he barely looked at it, slipping a scrap of paper with a dorm hall and room number written on it with a wink. It was a random room and number, but he knew it didn't matter. She wouldn't turn up.

 

He slept in a small comfortable nook on the top floor of the library, scattering a few books around him for an alibi in case someone found him. The couch was more comfortable than the small bedroll he'd had at Paul's, and he dreamed of flying books, surrounded by the scent of paper.

 

In the morning, he used his stolen card to get into the training gymnasium early, and stole another set of clothes from the locker room, changing quickly and listening hard for anyone coming.

 

He went back to the student records office early, before they opened, cast a small butterfly illusion through a window and around some file cabinets, then waited on a bench a bit away, with a clear view of the doors. 

 

Eventually, he saw the boy he'd stolen his ID from enter, and after a few minutes, leave again. He looked tired and disheveled and had a hat to cover his bedhead. Perfect.

 

He waited another hour, going to steal breakfast, watching students mill about, enjoying the brisk morning. Then he went back into the records office.

 

He immediately went to the same girl from yesterday.

 

“I think someone stole my ID,” he said, this time haughty and irritated, a far cry from yesterday's friendly flirt. The whiplash was evident in her eyes. She didn't stand a chance.

 

“Wh- what makes you think that?” she said haltingly, clearly startled. 

 

“Someone used it to get into my dorm room this morning while I was at class. A guy with a hat on. And the name is wrong,” he said, tossing the card she'd printed yesterday onto her desk with an impatient clatter. She picked it up and looked at it.

 

“What… what do you mean? I looked it up yesterday, and it matched the records.”

 

He had her.

 

“Then he tampered with your records, too. Can you detect magic? Did anyone do anything in the records rooms?” he demanded. “If you can't, I can. And I need this solved. Now.”

 

She looked at the card again, and he saw recognition come over her face as he applied the pressure.

 

“I… someone came in this morning and said he lost his card. I printed him a new one. It was this one. Do you think- could that have been…?”

 

He made an irritated noise. “And I suppose you left him alone for a few minutes to go to stamp it?” She just nodded, her face flushing slightly, not looking up from the card. “Well lord knows what else was changed. Bring it out, let's go over it. I just want this fixed, I don't want to make a big mess of things and get any higher ups involved. I don't have time for an inquiry.”

 

She nodded again, harder, looking relieved. He could tell she was still confused, but just wanted this to be fixed. Most of the others in the offices looked like student employees as well, and he could tell from the quality and wear of her clothes that she needed this job.

 

She went to the records rooms to retrieve the papers, and quietly admitted she could see a trace of illusion magic. He huffed angrily, and began telling her what to do. Preoccupied with her own apparent failure of security, she mostly just obeyed what he said. By the time he left, he had his own personal copies (“In case something like this happens again, I want my own records,” he insisted,) of the paperwork that had his name, Oscar Wilde, on it all. It was in her handwriting, with her official stamps, and no magic traces on it.

 

He took advantage of the lazy university youth population to lift more clothes and money, easy pickings, before finding a train to take him to Cambridge’s Bard University.

 

Essex was good. But Cambridge was the best. And now he had all the papers he would need to get in. The student's old transcripts weren't anything special, but he would pay his first semester up front, and then focus on his scores.

 

The bribes to get in were steep and cleaned out his entire savings, including what he’d taken from Paul and his mother. But he did get in. He looked like a student whose grades weren’t quite up to snuff, but was closing the gap with gold. Without the paperwork, he wouldn’t have had any chance at all.

 

And then Oscar began school to become a bard.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mentions of sex (very non graphic), more lying, more manipulating, some race and profiling stuff.

Oscar spent the first week sleeping in a hidden library corner, washing in the communal dorm areas, either stealing food, money for food, or going to random club meetings for free food. Eventually, he was able to squirrel away enough to get a flat with a few roommates. It wasn’t nice, but it was progress, and he made sure he got his own room.

 

Oscar had never had an issue with making friends, when he wanted, but he didn’t quite want his roommates to be his friends. Jane had taught him to always be at the top of the castle, and in the exchange of power, being a confidant and a trusted pal wouldn’t do well in conjunction with being untouchable and elevated. He was friendly with his roommates, but not quite friends. He quietly started an argument between two of them, that he then pretended to be above and made them feel childish and embarrassed about, and always made the third repeat himself, pretending to never hear him the first time he spoke. They were cruel and subtle, but effective in establishing his dominance of the space.

 

They were nice people. He half wished he’d found a flat with folks he wouldn’t feel guilty about manipulating-

 

No. No, he didn’t feel guilt. He didn’t have the luxury of feeling guilt, or making friendships, or trusting people. He had to be the best, or else nothing waited for him after he graduated. Reminding himself of their station- them, rich pampered boys who’d never slept on anything but silk sheets and had been raised on healthy family fare and massive properties, and himself, the fatherless son of a preoccupied homeless irish bitch who only slept under a roof if she slept with the roof’s owner- always helped him feel less guilty. And it was good to flex his manipulation skills, keep them sharp. Anyways, he wasn’t always cruel. Kindness and favors were useful tools as well. He brought one of the boys medicine when he was ill, without being asked, and the boy spent a month feeling uneasily indebted to him, returning the small favor with much larger favors in an effort to ease the debt he felt owed. That was kind of him, right?

 

Campus was surprisingly hard to steal from. Kids here were rich, sure, but so rich that any thieving he did was such a large amount, it was immediately reported to the police and created a big fuss. He had to find another source of income, but he feared repercussions on his social status if he was seen serving food at a cafeteria. The other boys were aware he was a scholarship case, not there because of alumni blood or money, but he kept an aura of mystery around that all.

 

He found a job working as a stagehand at the campus theater. Perfect. Part of his job description was to not be seen.

 

But he worked meager hours, around his studies. He loaded up on classes, unsure what he already knew and didn’t know. His mother had taught him to read and write and basic math. That was all. Everything he knew about magic was cobbled together from books.

 

He nearly failed out in his first month, when he realized he didn’t know how to read sheet music, and he didn’t know latin, and he wasn’t fluent in the language of magic.

 

Worse still, he couldn’t even ask. If he asked an especially stupid question in class, he would become lesser than the other students, and the professors might start asking questions about how this idiot boy who didn’t even know what a staff or a bar was.

 

Luckily, fake-it-till-you-make-it was a tool he’d employed often in his life, and he was able to bluster through the first week of classes, taking notes like a madman and trying to deduce meaning from context clues. That weekend, he surreptitiously took out as many books as he thought he could read, and took more notes over all of them.

 

He barely slept.

 

(But at least he knew where he would be sleeping each night, and that it had a roof and a bed that was only his, and a lock on the door.)

 

He didn’t even take breaks to eat, having meals surrounded by books.

 

(Campus food was prepared for him and included in his tuition fees, and he ate fresh fruit and quality meat prepared to his taste, and there was always cream and sugar for his coffee.)

 

He made no friends.

 

(He didn’t know what he would do with one if he had one, anyways. This all was nothing new.)

 

And by the time the first semester finished, he was not the top of his class, but at the top of the middle achievers. Above average.

 

It wasn’t enough for the full boat scholarship he’d hoped for, but it had become clear halfway through the semester that wasn’t a suitable goal quite yet, so he’d gone about trying to plan where to get the money for next semester. It would take a lot of stealing to collect enough for that- enough stealing to draw attention. He was very careful to limit his criminal activities now that he was a student. If he got caught, he couldn’t just jump towns like he and Jane had. He had to be perfect, now. There was more at risk.

 

He had a good plan for how to get a better steady income during the semester, but he needed to build credibility for that, and would need to start getting himself friends, associates, being more socially active. For now, he needed a big grift over the holiday break.

 

Most of the best grifts he’d done with Jane required two people. But maybe, with his new bard talents, a bit of modifying…

 

People were stupid during the holidays, and fancied themselves do-good samaritans, and were distracted. He changed from his stagehand job to working as a bartender in one of the busiest parts of town. It wasn’t something he would’ve been able to sustain during his first semester, exhausting as it was, but during the holiday he was able to put in the hours and energy. Even making an honest living doing that was able to bolster his savings. His good looks, easy banter, practice smile and puns filled his pockets with tips. He kept himself friendly, but the sort of just-out-of-reach desirable that made people try and close the distance with gold and return visits, using a sort of lead-and-tug approach. Flirty and charming one moment, racist or rude another. A push and pull that made people fight harder to reel him in, as opposed to pure friendliness. Because nobody truly wanted an easy and perfectly kind friend. His attention was sought after.

 

He started seeding a story about a woman who’d lost a beautiful silver locket from her fiancee in the area, and was offering a massive reward for anyone who found it.

 

“But she wants to be discreet, you know? She doesn’t want her fiancee to know she lost it, cause who wants a wife who can’t even hang on to a thing when it’s chained to her neck?” he joked, dropping toothpicks with olives into a pair of martinis and passing them to the two women sitting there. They both looked a little aghast at his rude statement, but were smiling, drawn in by his bluntness.

 

“What kind of a reward?” one of the women asked. He shrugged, as if he didn’t really care.

 

“Couple thousand gold. I think she said… eight? I’d have to check, she left her card here when she asked me to check around.” He made a show of looking around the bar, joking about himself being as forgetful as the woman all the while, until he produced a scrap of paper with some falsified contact information and a rough sketch of a heart shaped locket, along with a more detailed description.

 

A few days later, he hired a street kid to do as he said, casting message and sending him round the corner. He stayed out of sight, but within range. He dictated what the boy was to say, and watched from his concealed spot as the kid held up the locket in his little chubby, innocent fist. The women took the bait, one immediately saying it was the locket that the reward was asking for.

 

“I gotta get back home, or I’ll get the stick,” the boy said. “Can- can I split the reward with you guys? If you give me half the reward, I’ll give you the locket, and you can go collect the whole thing. And then it’s like- you said the reward was for eight thousand gold? So…” the kid was counting on his fingers now, as Oscar instructed him, and he mentally patted himself on the back. He’d really outdone himself with this one. “So if you… since I found it, I should get half. Fair’s fair’s fair, right?” The women were nodding. “Okay. So I did the finding, and you do the returning, so we both get the reward! But I gotta get home… so what if you give me, uh… four hun- four thousand right now. Of yours. Then when you get the reward, the eight thousand, that’s… that’s eight minus four, cause you already gave it to me ahead of time. Right?”

 

The women drank up the innocent kid act, and even helped show him how to stack gold and count it by stack, and then multiply. Finally, he gave them the locket, and they gave him the gold, and they all exchanged thank you’s and laughter. Go team and all that. The two women walked away with the locket, expecting to get paid back that 4k, plus an additional 4k, for their afternoon of good work.

 

The kid came around the corner and Oscar collected his winnings, giving the kid a small cut and telling him to keep practicing, and he could pull stunts like that one day too.

 

“Teach a man to fish, as opposed to giving a man a fish, right?” he said, clapping the kid on the back. The child scowled.

 

“I hate fish.”

 

“Sure. Run off, go practice your lying.”

 

The next day, the women were at the bar, as expected. They wanted to see the paper about the woman with the locket again, they casually asked him.

 

Predictably, they didn’t admit that they had found the locket. This was human fallacy at it’s best- they’d already split the findings with the cute little boy, and had realized if they tried to pass it along to Oscar, he could ask for the same split finders-returners as they’d done with the boy, and their profit of 4k would decrease even more. So they just wanted to see the address, but didn’t want Oscar to get any credit for finding it, and cut into their returns.

 

Oscar played chagrined.

 

“The police showed up this morning, actually,” he said, leaning across the bar and speaking to them in a low, conspiratory tone. “Apparently it was all some hoax. The lady faked losing the locket, and hired some kid to go around and act all innocent, with some cheap ripoff locket, and try to sell it to people. They said it actually worked on a few people. Poor fools. Can’t spot a fake, tricked by kid innocence. How embarrassing,” he huffed, rolling his eyes. “I’m a little embarrassed to have been tricked by her myself, but I’m glad I wasn’t stupid enough to get any money involved in it.”

 

Admittedly, this was his favorite part. When the hard work of the con was out of his hands, and the mark took it upon themselves. A good con required no cover up. The mark would be so embarrassed that they’d been made, that they would do all the work for him. He could see the dawning shock, then anger, then shame roll through the women’s faces, and they excused themselves to the restrooms. He smiled and continued polishing glasses.

 

A few other small tricks added to the four thousand gold from the locket grift paid for his tuition. From there, he used his barkeeping experience to make himself a friendly face among the other students, and got a nice betting pool going among his fellow students. 

 

Rich kids in school loved two things, above all else: gossip, and spending. The betting pool provided outlets for both. He set up bets for anything anyone wanted- who was going to be that semester’s valedictorian, how many days before the pyromancy building caught fire again, who would get first chair in the upcoming performance, when Noel Lyonson would get caught for having four girlfriends, which girlfriend would physically assault Noel first. It was a great way to practice his maths, and his years of experience being everyone’s pal allowed him to get a massive clientele going. And his not-quite-perfect grades actually helped, because nobody trusted a perfect student.

 

A year and a half passed like this, and he was thriving. The dogging momma’s boy, the homeless italian kid, the curly-haired fiddler was long gone. Now he was sixteen (though his paperwork said eighteen) and in his element. He was beautiful, with his dark curls kept short on the side to bring out the best of his cheekbones and wide, full mouth, but long on the top to drape rakishly low on his forehead, helping emphasize his height. His eyes were navy and wide, full of mirth that he could spread amongst his peers effortlessly. Or they could be chips of blue spinel, as he carelessly dropped a slur or a curse. His body was lithe and strong, and he used it like all the other tools he had to his disposal, to gain any and every advantage. He was a lady’s man, and also a man’s man, and was generally well known for a good time, if you could only hold his attention.

 

He never admitted his first time was his first time, and maintained a strict facade to both himself and the adonis of a man catching his breath beside him, that this was something he did often and was absolutely comfortable and well-experienced with. He did not ask to be held after, simply tangled their legs and sat up just enough to light a cigarette, flashing a toothy grin and a wink when the man laughed at Oscar’s careless cliche behavior.

 

After sex was the only time he smoked. He had too many plans for his throat to be filling it with cigarette poison.

 

He had started restraining himself a bit in his classes. He had taken an illusionist concentration, and was consuming texts and spells with a fierce joy. This was true power. The illusions and distractions of his youth, spun with mundane music and simple sleight of hand, were nothing compared to what he could do with magic now. There seemed to be no limits, and as others simply followed the curriculum, he hungered to keep pushing, keep learning, better, stronger, faster, more complex. But to keep discreet and undetected, he only performed barely above adequate in his classes. During tests, he would create a rainbow and a shower of gold with a quick lilting whistle, getting decent scores. On his own, practicing in the gymnasium late at night, or deep in the campus forest practice zones, with the same whistle and a single additional measure, he created the illusion of a sun dappled glade with the rainbow, the raining gold and gems of every hue, a pastel sunset-bright sky, bugs and birds and deer, and was able to manipulate all aspects at will. He could create a storm that shook the teeth with every peal of thunder, that left him half blind from the snapping lightning. He practiced small, delicate illusions like many legged spiders doing a choreographed dance, small pocket watches that you could even take apart and see inside, letters with detailed scrollwork and his own handwriting.

 

He knew he was getting ahead of his classmates, pulling away from the pack, but he kept it quiet. Always thinking, always wanting to have a back up plan. It was useful to be underestimated, to be seen as the fairly clever but lazy boy in the top third of his class, useful and functional but certainly not ambitious. He kept his ambitions concealed behind a facade of toothy smiles and sultry-yet-bored eyes. He tweaked his posture and body language toward careless and satisfied, just another one of the decadent rich boys with passing grades and no worries. It was a fun guise to wear, especially when he could act like a typical arrogant wealthy teen, playing off his true hard-won arrogance that came with the power he was invisibly amassing.

 

It became almost a game, to keep the truth and the pretense up, and there was the usual thrill of a lie, compounded with the secretive pride he kept inside. He knew he was the best in his class, and rapidly catching up to the best even in older classes. 

 

And then one of his classmates created an illusion of a dragon.


End file.
